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Paula Bishop knows the demands inherent in the theatre adage that the show must go on.

Bishop is the director of St. Peter’s Players latest offering, Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple — the Female Version which tells what happens when friends Olive Madison and Florence Unger decide to become roommates after being abandoned by their husbands.

St. Peter's Players keeps the show rolling for over 50 yearsBack to video

Barely three weeks before The Odd Couple’s scheduled opening on Feb. 15, the actress playing Florence had to pull out of the show.

“I moved Sarah Glubish who was playing Sylvie, one of the Trivial Pursuit players, into the role of Florence and cast Abagail Vanmerlin as Sylvie.

“Florence is an enormous role to learn in just three weeks but Sarah is a real trooper and the other members of the cast encouraged and supported her the whole way and Abagail made Sylvie her own, so it all worked out,” says Bishop.

An added burden for Glubish was that she is also cast in Workshop Theatre’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that opens on March 8 but Bishop says Glubish never complained about the new workload.

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The theatre gods were really testing Bishop because, on opening night, the actress who plays Olive, Catherine Hiscocks, dislocated her shoulder just before her entrance at the top of the second act.

“It was a really freak accident. Catherine reached over to adjust her costume and popped her shoulder. I was out in the audience watching the show and I could tell there was something wrong because Catherine was adjusting some of her blocking.”

Bishop went backstage between the first and second scene of Act 2 and discovered what had happened.

“I am a nurse so I tried to pop the shoulder back in but couldn’t so we taped it instead and Catherine finished the show. Immediately after the curtain call I drove her to the hospital and they popped the shoulder back in but not before giving her a sedative. That’s how much pain she was in but she didn’t drop a single line.”

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There’s a long history of ensuring shows go on at St. Peter’s Anglican Church. For 51 years in fact. Dave Cormack, who taught drama at Western Canada High School, SAIT and Central Memorial High School, created and ran St. Peter’s Players until 2010.

“With Dave at the helm, St. Peter’s Players was essentially a one-man show. When he retired we had to start delegating responsibilities,” says Bishop, who joined the group in 1990.

“When my husband and I moved to Calgary 29 years ago, we were looking for a church to join. When I learned that St. Peter’s Anglican Church had a theatre group I knew it was the ideal match because I’d been involved in theatre from the time I was 13.”

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For each new show, St. Peter’s converts its hall into a theatre which can seat as many as 200 people, especially for the big musicals, but for The Odd Couple it has been configured to seat 80 people.

“I wanted a really intimate setting. I want the audiences to feel as if they are in Olive’s living room,” says Bishop, who adds the plan for next year is to produce a version of the musical Chicago with Hiscocks directing.

St. Peter’s Players’ The Odd Couple — the Female Version still has seats available for its 7:30 p.m. performances on Feb. 28 and March 1 and 2.

I caught the Feb. 23 performance and laughed heartily for two hours. This really is one of Simon’s funniest comedies and this production is blessed with a strong cast. Hiscocks and Glubish are dynamite sparring partners and the scene in which Olive and Florence entertain the Spanish Costazuela brothers, played by Brad Leavitt and Murray Schmidt, is nothing short of hysterical.

I can’t think of a better start for St. Peter’s Player’s march towards a full century of community theatre than this production of The Odd Couple — the Female Version.

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